SDC News One - People of the First Light, How Did That First Thanksgiving Go For You?

The People of the First Light

How Did That First Thanksgiving Go For You?

By SDC News One Staff Writers for SDC TalkRadio

APACHE JUNCTION AZ [IFS] -- On a cool New England morning, long before church bells and weather vanes dotted the horizon, the first rays of sunlight hit the shoreline—gold on gray water, soft on cedar and pine. For thousands of years, this place belonged to the Wampanoag, the People of the First Light, who watched dawn arrive before anyone else on the Atlantic coast. They farmed the “three sisters”—corn, beans, and squash—fished the inlets, harvested shellfish, and lived in dome-shaped wetu warmed by fire and family.

https://youtu.be/R0p8PPbY9kE?si=oWzpFfbaN8vU-_xR

Their world was old. Their society was matrilineal, structured, spiritual, and deeply rooted in the land. And then, in the early 1600s, a new world began washing up on their beaches.

Before the First Thanksgiving

By the time the Mayflower anchored off Cape Cod in 1620, the Wampanoag were already living in the shadow of something catastrophic. Between 1616 and 1619, European-borne diseases—viral ghosts carried on sails and breath—swept through New England and killed an estimated 40,000 Wampanoag people. Entire villages collapsed. Fields fell silent. Families were erased.

So when the Pilgrims arrived, they stepped onto a land haunted by recent loss, where cleared fields and empty houses stood as evidence of a civilization disrupted by invisible invaders.

Massasoit, the Wampanoag sachem, understood immediately what was at stake. He did not meet the Pilgrims from a place of weakness or naïveté. He met them from a place of strategy: this strange new group could become either an ally against rival tribes—or another threat to outmaneuver.

In the spring of 1621, the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims negotiated a peace treaty. It was practical. It was fragile. And for a time, it held.

The Real Story After “Thanksgiving”

The shared harvest feast in 1621—later transformed by myth into the First Thanksgiving—was not a moment of colonial harmony. It was a diplomatic gathering, a brief pause in a century that would soon turn violent.

After that meal, the story did not drift into friendship and abundance.

Here is what actually happened:

1620s–1640s: Expansion and Tension

As more English settlers poured in, Wampanoag land was swallowed piece by piece—through pressure, debt schemes, and “legal” manipulations of English courts that the Wampanoag never agreed to be bound by. Livestock trampled crops. English towns rose where Wampanoag villages had stood for millennia.

The peace treaty with Massasoit lasted, astonishingly, for decades. But once he passed, everything changed.

1675–1676: King Philip’s War

Massasoit’s son Metacom—called “King Philip” by the English—faced a new world: one where settlers outnumbered Indigenous people, where land was vanishing, where English laws and English weapons pressed in on every side.

War broke out.

It became one of the deadliest conflicts in American history per capita. Thousands of Wampanoag were killed, enslaved, or driven from their homelands. By the end of the war, the English had crushed Wampanoag sovereignty and seized nearly all remaining lands. The consequences of that single conflict still ripple through New England’s borders and politics today.

The Centuries After

The Wampanoag survived—though in scattered, reorganized communities. They endured forced conversions, state oversight, boarding schools, and persistent efforts to erase both their identity and their history.

But the story didn’t end there.

The People Who Endured

Today, their descendants live in several communities, including:

Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the “People of the Water,” who fought for federal recognition for decades and won it in 2007.

Aquinnah Wampanoag on Martha’s Vineyard, once known to outsiders as the “Gay Head Wampanoag,” who reclaimed the name Aquinnah to honor their own language and lineage.

These communities still fish the waters their ancestors fished. They still speak their language—Wôpanâak—brought back after a century of forced silence. They still hold ceremonies acknowledging the spirits woven into sea, sky, forest, and fire.

The Wampanoag did not vanish. They adapted. They persisted. They reclaimed pieces of what was taken.

A Different Kind of Thanksgiving Reflection

Every November, the country tells a story about Pilgrims and Native people sharing a meal in peace. But the fuller truth—the one worth hearing on a quiet Sunday morning—is more complicated and far more human.

The Wampanoag gave the Pilgrims knowledge that kept them alive.

They offered diplomacy when they had every reason to mistrust.

They endured catastrophe—disease, warfare, displacement—and still held tight to their identity as the First Light people of the East.

Thanksgiving, for many Wampanoag today, is not a celebration but a National Day of Mourning—a reminder of what was lost, and what was taken.

And yet, the story is not only about sorrow. It’s about endurance. Continuity. A people who refused to disappear.

A Morning Thought to Carry Forward

As the sun rises over Massachusetts and Rhode Island today—casting that same shimmering glow their ancestors once greeted—it touches Wampanoag homelands, old and new. Mashpee. Aquinnah. The trails, the dunes, the shell heaps, the tide pools, the cedar groves.

The People of the First Light are still here.

They have always been here.

And the story of America—our real story—is deeper and older than the myths told at school tables and family feasts.

On this Sunday morning, maybe that’s the point:

To remember the truth.

To honor the people who carried it forward.

And to let the first light of the day fall on the whole history, not just the comfortable parts.

- 30 -